Gary: I think it could be as old as the 1910s; but it could be as new as the 1930s. It's actually a very common souvenir pennant--despite its vintage. You'll see two other equally common pennants of similar construction--all sewed letters: "Niagara Falls" and "Atlantic City". Your Gettysburg pennant seems to match these right down to the font.

If so, they're all by Trench and they were issued ca. 1929, according to my catalogue by them.

Thanks. That's really helpful. Any chance you could post a photo of the page in the Trench catalog?

I know it's not a very valuable pennant. I picked it up in a lot that included the Green White Sox Pennant in Post #5149. For me it's an opportunity to learn about the construction of the early pennants before spending money on an expensive one some day (e.g. an early Detroit Tigers pennant).

Trench Mfg. Co. catalogue, 1929
 

Gary: Here's an excerpt showing the Atlantic City and Niagara Falls souvenir pennants I mentioned.

Looks like, in 1929, Trench offered these in three sizes: 9" x 24"; 9" x 32"; and 10" x 36". Perhaps your Gettysburg pennant fits one of these dimensions?

All wool, sewn letters, oversized....about a buck apiece. Of course, few people had a dollar in 1929.

Nice! Here’s my 66 o’s pennant.

Thanks for that. My pennant measures 34" x 11 1/2" so maybe it's by Trench but from a different year?

Help required
 

I could use some assistance please. I picked up this '59 White Sox Pennant kind of by accident. (Well I hit "bid" on my phone before getting to have a good look at the photos - if that's an accident).

When I had a better look at the photos, I was expecting it to be a Mitchell and Ness reproduction. It's just been delivered and I'm not sure. I found a few other auctions of the same pennant that show it as vintage 1959. I also haven't been able to find a Mitchell and Ness pennant of this one.

I'd value your thoughts on this one....real or repro?

It's good. Not an M&N. Years ago, there was a pretty big "find" of '59 Chisox Pennants.

It is authentic to the era, but what they call "new old stock" meaning it was made in 1959, but was likely stashed away in storage and never put into circulation. Nice pennant.

Thanks Mark. That's made my day.

"Mr. Senator" was the creation of Zang Auerbach, brother of Red, who also did The Boston Celtics' leprechaun.

No offense meant, Gary, but the Gettysburg looks way to pristine to be 100 years old. Just my opinion.

No offense at all. I got with a few other pennants and thought it would something to learn from. Any thoughts on it's origin and age?

Right.... I still remember when Mastro/Legendary auctioned his original concept art of the Senator. T'was super cool, but just another underbidder status for me.

Most early 1900s pennants are heavy and extremely durable. Almost all of my oversized baseball pennants from that era have an army blanket-like feel to them. Also the stitches tends to be very tight and small, which is why you usually see these with tassels intact and the spine firmly attached. Some even have the stitching at the top and bottom of the spine (i.e. along all four edges). With sewn on logo and letters there is no cracking, seemingly the only real threat to condition are moths, which do seem to like the old fabric.

That Gettysburg pennant sure seems like it’s around 100 years old to me, but would defer to Domer for a more accurate estimate.

Sounds reasonable to me. How would I know? It’s not like I actually own any oversized pennants. :mad: At any rate, it’s in fantastic condition!

Asking the experts for any information on these 1980 Olympic Pennants. Cheap, modern style and regular full size - just wondering if anyone remembers these. Sold at Lake Placid? One has a Pepsi logo? Thanks in advance!!

Update: Found a video on YouTube from an exhibition game vs a NHL team. Here is a screenshot showing two of these pennants.

Hey Jon .... really nice ... I don’t recall seeing these in 20 years or so following eBay. That’s the only info I can provide. Both are keepers!

My 1979 NBA All-Star Game pennant While not a felt vintage and modern to a collector, its special to me because I was in attendance with my Father. The pennant was gifted to me by a co-worker who knew I collected and was also in attendance. It is a tough one to find.

They are around, but they are tougher to find. The thing that holds them back is they are so plain.

Very cool Adam, can’t say I’ve ever seen it before. Thanks for sharing!

A Pennant Catalog?
 

Having read through this thread, I know that form time to time people mention creating a book out of this thread and other material.

Is that something of interest to people?

The only real book that I've been able to find is Mike Egner's Vintage Pennant Price Guide. That's great but I think there are opportunities to catalog the variations of each pennant, add details about the maker (where that's known), etc.

I also like the idea of having a catalog reference for each pennant type/variant.

There's so much great knowledge on Net54 but I can't help think it could be organized in some way.

I'd be happy to help with the layout/tech side and a propose some structure. But really it needs the experience of the contributors to this thread.

Thoughts?

I would love something like that. Paul Muchinsky’s pinback book is a treasure. Just let me know where to send color pics of every vintage Giants pennant I own! :p

Thanks Rob. I think the following are the key bits of information to include:

1. Catalog Reference Number
2. Picture
3. Team
4. Manufacturer
5. Primary Color
6. Spine Color
7. Tassels
8. Size
9. Year
10. Commentary
11. Value
12. Rarity

Have I missed anything?

I was contemplating a simple naming convention for the catalog reference.
Something like like "NYG001-AD".

• The 1st 3 letters represent the team
• The next 3 numbers are just a sequence number
• The final 2 letters represent the manufacturer (e.g. AD for AdFlag)

This isn't something I'm looking to do for commercial gain. I just wanted to create a catalog that we could all contribute to.

As for photos, I'm happy to use any existing photo galleries that people have that they'd be willing to use for the project. But if anyone is so inclined, photos of each pennant against a white background would be ideal.

I was kind of being facetious, Gary. While I love the idea, I'm not sure others could possibly photo all their pennants. Mine are already in google photos, as I think are football Rob's, Greg's, Eric's and maybe others. You would be welcome to my photos but I'm not a "completist" as in I don’t need every primary and spine color. I hope you/we can get this project off the ground!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/5w4MyAqWtyAqb8JU7

https://photos.app.goo.gl/VTWwsCGCUcnhRKy28

Count me in, to whatever extent I can help.

While I've wished something along these lines existed for years now (and I think it kind of does in a non-traditional sense, as this forum and the content shared within are encyclopedic), I think the effort to create and more importantly maintain would be monumental.

Also, including value would be a mistake in my opinion, except maybe in the most general of terms, because there really isn't an established book value for most of the pennants out there. How can you assign a value on a pennant that sells once every 5 or 10 years? Unless they're from the 70s or later and there are dozens for sale on eBay at any given time, it would be a guess more often than not. I think that's actually a disservice to the collector because it creates false perceptions. Not to mention realized prices are extremely volatile. So what's the point? I think rarity would be a better barometer of value....Maybe coming up with a rarity scale from 1 on to 10 and then let the market decide what the corresponding values are.

Good luck if you decide to do and I'm happy to help where I can.

I'd love to see more pennants books. I'd especially like to see a book that attempts to organize pennants by maker/series (with lots of pictures, of course). And I'd love to see Kyle get all of his excellent research into a book.

Thanks guys. I'm working my way backward through this thread. I'm back to page 65 so far and I'm at 354 pennants.

I've created an Excel spreadsheet with the photos and other pieces of info for each pennant. That allows them to be sorted and filtered. I want to do a bit of tidying up and then I'll share the file to get feedback and input.

A document/book will leave more room for photos, background etc. But for now I just want to get the core catalog and information sorted.

Awesome, Gary! I agree with FB Rob on value. Rarity can be quantified but value is so arbitrary. With vintage SF Giants pennants, the prices go down as my fellow Giants collectors find an example. Besides that, there’s alway the old saying “it’s “worth” whatever someone is willing to pay.”

Now I see why pics on a white background would be best (for Excel). I’m wondering if there is a photo editing tool to either crop to three points (not four) or white out outside of three points?

BTW - I have several pennant spreadsheets. In my one spreadsheet with photos, I have grouped them by “series.” My series are more about similar looks but those may inadvertently have divided them by makers as well.

draft Pennant catalog
 

Thanks. I accept the points about values. I'll remove that shortly. To be fair, I doubt that I could reliably assess values except if there was a recent sale.

I've shared an early version of the spreadsheet here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/138D...ew?usp=sharing

It's 150MB so you'll have to download it to have a look. I have 383 pennants cataloged so far including a photo of each.

• I've created a catalog reference for each pennant. This will allow us to speak about a specific pennant/variant without ambiguity.
• I've added a column for Theme. My intention is that is where we can group pennants that are part of a series (e.g. Giant on a Bridge or Champions Grommet)

I'd be grateful if people could come back to me with manufacturers. dates or rarity where you have that info. Feel free to post it here or send me a PM if you'd prefer.

If you have any commentary that you'd like to add, please feel free to let me know.

My computer says "the file is too large to open".

I can help to contribute with dates and scarcity. I did the same for Egner's Pennant Guide, and have stayed on top of this for over 3 decades. Some pennants have proven to be more scarce since that Guide was published, and some are more prevalent.

I cannot put as many hours into it as the first time but still happy to help out, as this is my passion. Just reach out if you need some help.

If you are pulling images off of this thread, I have tons more pennants that I've never posted here (many of which are not in Egner's book). I can possibly fill some holes once we see which images are missing. Best of luck with this ambitious project!

I've saved it as a PDF here to make it easier to open.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oIL...ew?usp=sharing

The pdf won't allow you to sort and filter by team etc. But at least you'll be able to open it. :D

Thanks.

Hmmmm. What could be wrong here

You've got me... :confused:

Pennant catalog
 

Thanks for those who've come back with feedback. I've saved an updated version here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EPE...ew?usp=sharing

Now with 469 pennants and corrections.

Hey, pennant guys
 

Gary,

I love this idea and think documenting it the way you suggest makes a lot of sense. I’ve tossed around a similar idea in the past, but I don’t have enough time to take this head-on. But I’m happy to help!

I think other fields we could consider is something like decade/date range, as a level of detail higher than a specific year as not all pennant years are known. This could auto populate as a simple calc if a year is input, and default to NULL if a specific year isn’t entered (overridden as required). Also, perhaps league and or sport if we bring in other sports. I think having football (rob has this really well documented) and even basketball + hockey would be fun...but I may have just doubled the length of the data set [emoji23]

At any rate, I think this is great. Documenting this electronically with the previously mentioned attributes will add tremendous value to the community to easily group by, sort, filter, etc.

Count me in!

I find it interesting that the same company (WGN) made three different distinct styles for the 1951 ASG. Not sure if Baskin Robbins had yet been in business, but were there even three different flavors of ice cream back then?

I notice a few football pennants snuck into the document. New York Bulldogs and Yankees. No complaints from me, but maybe we want to keep football and baseball separate? :)

I'm planning to keep this to just baseball for now. I don't think I have the time for other sports just now. Honestly, I just didn't know about those 2 so left them in for the moment until I could look up the background.

Two new ‘69 Mets pennants just arrived. This makes 8 or 9 now ... pic pennant is ASCO and scroll is Trench

Nice, Greg. “8 or 9” 1969’s?

Just got this beauty!
 

Picked this up last night!

Nice pennants. I always have a soft spot for the Miracle mets.

I have another draft of the catalog available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14wD...ew?usp=sharing

Thanks for all the updates. I'm still working through the various google photo albums. The catalog is now up to 618 entries and growing.

As a bit of fun to add some competition into the mix, this the Top 10 most populated Teams/Events in the catalog:

75 San Francisco Giants
54 Chicago Cubs
40 Brooklyn Dodgers
39 New York Giants
37 New York Yankees
35 Detroit Tigers
26 World Series
22 All-Star Game
22 Los Angeles Dodgers
21 Houston Astros

Nice! That is one of the first Giants pennants I ever bought. It led me to want to collect more and more.

Thanks! Yeah there are a few more I don’t have. Will put up pics soon. Gary has some pics of my ‘69 Mets in his spreadsheet

Pennant catalog
 

I have another update of the Pennant catalog here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jBP...ew?usp=sharing

A big thanks to Kyle, Rob, Rob, Michael and Erik for their help (photos, info, etc.)

If anyone has updates that they'd like me to include, please let me know.

Because we all love stats...

• 751 pennants catalogued
• All have unique catalog references
• 51.64% have manufacturers identified
• 8% have rarity assessed

The current Top 10 by "team" as follows:

127 Giants
90 Dodgers
63 Cubs
43 Yankees
37 Tigers
26 World Series
25 Phillies
23 All-Star Game
22 Houston
21 Reds

Sweet
 

Love the orange! Crispy!

Yeah, that all orange one is killer!

I still don’t see what’s wrong with the Philadelphia pennant. :confused:

You think it came with the "ATH"? :)